Economic Benefits of Marijuana

Relegalizing Marijuana would definitely help the American economy. Were we to stop prosecuting Marijuana “Violations,” we would save Billions of dollars and create Billions more in new tax revenue. Additionally, hundreds of thousands of new jobs would be created not just in producing the product but in increasing the need for the objects needed to bring in a crop.

In Indiana, we could see an economic boom with Marijuana. Consider this: There is an estimated one million pot smokers in Indiana, probably more than that. The “Average” smoker uses a quarter ounce per week, an ounce per month. That’s a million ounces. An average, indoor-grown plant will bear eight ounces every 90 days. That’s 125,000 plants needed every month. Outdoor plants usually bear less, and you only get one outdoor crop per season. There are an estimated 100,000 medical needs patients in Indiana, using, on average, two ounces per month, or 200,000 ounces per month of strain-specific Marijuana. So we’re up to 1,200,000 ounces of Marijuana per month, and we’re up to 150,000 plants per month. Indiana has a $3.50 per gram tax. There are 273,600,000 grams in the above numbers. $957,600,000 of tax collected. The tax is, however, excessive and might drive the final price up to a point an underground economy might be worth the risk to some. At $2.00 per gram, the tax would still be a healthy $547,200,000…a little over a half billion new dollars. While these are estimates, and no accurate numbers exist for Indiana, this is a conservative estimate of the money to be made, right here in Indiana.

This article is from April, 2012, and I think these numbers are on the conservative side as well.